Adding clarity to a debate that has just gotten louder and louder
Yes, obviously. Obviously she can.
She can make whatever music she wants, regardless of where she was born, but she was once a little girl growing up in Houston, Texas — I imagine that line dancing and honky tonks aren’t a foreign concept for her. People are really feeling big feelings about her new Cowboy Carter record, though, so it’s worth digging into a little further. I’d argue that not only is Beyoncé allowed to make country music, but that, as a test case, “Texas Hold ‘Em” fits better into the country canon than anything Florida Georgia Line ever put out.
First, it’s worth dismissing the obvious lines of attack on the album — that
Country music is white music, and
Beyoncé is an R&B singer and should stick to the genre that made her famous.
Country music is not white music — just like every other type of music we think of as American (jazz, hip-hop, the blues, funk, soul, R&B, rock & roll), it started in the Black community. The physical instrument of the banjo, for example, was created by enslaved people in the Caribbean hundreds of years before it was popularized (in white culture) in what we now call bluegrass and country music. (If you’re really interested in this, go read Rhiannon Giddens’s article in The Guardian; she’s a true scholar on this subject. She’s also the person playing viola and banjo on “Texas Hold ‘Em.”)
And artists move between genres all the time! We can call Bey’s move here the “Reverse Taylor Swift,” in fact, the transition from pop/r&b to country. There’s more than a little “stick to sports” energy here, and it’s kinda gross. The backlash that André 3000 received from the hip-hop community for his (sort of?) jazz album doesn’t apply in Beyoncé’s case, either — Dre hasn’t made a single solo rap album (the genre that made him famous), but Beyoncé has many important albums in R&B land. To the degree we can say artists have to earn the right to try something new, she’s completely and totally earned that right.
“Texas Hold ‘Em” is a dance song, right? It has spawned waves of choreographies on TikTok and Instagram. It has gotten legions of people to turn on country radio who never would have dreamed of doing so before. It’s “Get Low” with a banjo. And country music has a long history of dance music! Remember “Chattahoochee” by Alan Jackson? Way down yonder on the Chattahoochee/ it gets hotter than a hoochie coochie … I learned how to swim and I learned who I was/ a lot about livin’ and a little ‘bout love”? That song (1992) had a whole entire line dance that went with it. I vividly remember my cousin practicing this dance with her friends; in fact, go find a white Southern woman between the ages of 40 and 50 right now. She can still do that dance. It’s engrained in her muscle memory, and it’ll come out every bit as fast as The Macarena, the Soulja Boy, or the Electric Slide will in other communities.
Now, “Chattahoochee” has a dance that goes with it, but the song’s lyrics do not explicitly talk about dancing like “Texas Hold ‘Em” does. A better comparison might be “Boot Scootin’ Boogie” (1991) by Brooks & Dunn, which, by the way, also had an accompanying dance. This song hits at all the same motifs as Beyoncé — dive bars, beers, smoke, gambling, romance — and the lyrics are about dancing:
Out in the country past the city limits sign
Where there’s a honky tonk near the County line
The joint starts jumpin’ every night when the sun goes down
They got whiskey, women, music, and smoke
It’s where all the cowboy folk go to boot scootin’ boogie
And though “Boot Scootin’ Boogie” was made by a country duo, the song is very much based on the blues. The verses are a 12-bar blues riff, and the “boot scootin’ boogie” vocal line that ends each chorus is a standard blues motif as well.
So that’s two songs by the countriest of mulleted country artists, songs in the exact same lane Beyoncé is using, one of which is pulling directly from the blues tradition that predates them all.
Even Beyoncé’s lyrics fit within this country tradition. Right away, she tells us to “park your Lexus/ throw your keys up…” which toys with the country music convention of songs about summertime and Chevy trucks in a hilarious tongue-in-cheek way. I know anyone who knows anything about music is familiar with that motif, but seriously. Go back and click on the links above to “Chattahoochee” and “Boot Scootin’ Boogie” — listen to how both songs start.
(Spoiler: it’s with engines revving.)
Then, there’s the repeated metaphor in “Texas Hold ‘Em” — playing cards. This ain’t Texas/ Ain’t no “hold ‘em”/ so lay your cards down, down, down, down… Kenny Rogers uses the same metaphor in his most famous lyric, “The Gambler,” a song you know even if you don’t know you know it.
You’ve got to know when to hold ’em, know when to fold ‘em
Know when to walk away, and know when to run
You never count your money when you’re sittin’ at the table
There’ll be time enough for countin’ when the dealin’s done
Both tunes are playing with ideas around holding back and letting go. Rogers’s song is the story of a man on a train who is getting life lessons from a gambling man — since he is on the train, we can assume he’s in the “know when to run” cycle of his gambling lifestyle. Beyoncé’s refers to a relationship, using the “ain’t no hold ‘em/ lay your cards down, down…” line to lay down an ultimatum to another person, since “putting your cards on the table” is another way to say “telling the whole truth, no bullshit.” With no holding back. And of course, since Bey made a dance song, there’s the double meaning of letting go on the dance floor and allowing the music (and the other person) to sweep them off their feet.
Even the feel of the two songs is similar, though “The Gambler” may well have been improved with a 4-on-the-floor beat, a detail that makes “Texas Hold ‘Em” a true dance song as well as a true country song.
So: not only is Beyoncé allowed to make a country album, not only does she not need anyone’s permission, but the first single from Cowboy Carter (note: that’s her actual last name, and also the last name of June Carter, famously of the Carter Family band and Johnny Cash’s wife of 35 years) fits perfectly in context with country music history.